Obama’s Skin Color Loses Him 2 Percent

That's the finding from the new AP study, which shows no statistically salient difference between levels of blatant and latent racism since the last election:

Overall, the survey found that by virtue of racial prejudice, Obama could lose 5 percentage points off his share of the popular vote in his Nov. 6 contest against Republican challenger Mitt Romney. But Obama also stands to benefit from a 3 percentage point gain due to pro-black sentiment, researchers said. Overall, that means an estimated net loss of 2 percentage points due to anti-black attitudes.

Although Republicans were more likely than Democrats to express racial prejudice in the questions measuring explicit racism (79 percent among Republicans compared with 32 percent among Democrats), the implicit test found little difference between the two parties. That test showed a majority of both Democrats and Republicans held anti-black feelings (55 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Republicans), as did about half of political independents (49 percent).

Close to 80 percent of Republican voters expressed "explicit racism." Maybe that's why they are comfortable with a candidate from a church whose theology remains based on white supremacy and that barred African-Americans from full membership as recently as 1978. Details on how the poll was conducted are here.

(Photo: A supporter of Mitt Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan waits for a campaign event to begin on October 12, 2012 in Lancaster, Ohio. By Jamie Sabau/Getty Images.)